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Level 3 – Year 1: Unit 8

Today in class a lot of our focus was on editing. As I had all of my footage and audio, I began to arrange them in the order that I felt was best, however about halfway through this process I noticed that one of the music tracks I had chosen didn’t really fit with the video, and so I spend a bit of time trying to find a new one that would both work and would be about the right length. Unfortunatly I was unable to find an appropriate song during my search.

I also used Adobe After Effects CS6 today, which is the first time I’ve used it in a while. I was also using it for a very different purpose than I had been previously, but luckily I found a short tutorial online that showed me what I needed to do, and while I wasn’t 100% succesful in creating the effect that I needed to for the film, I did learn a lot about how After Effects works and I am much more confident in my ability now to get the effect done, than I was a few weeks ago.

For my FMP I needed to record some audio, as I planned to have a voiceover accompany my video, this was because I am creating a movie trailer parody. And trailers tend to have a narrator give us a basic idea of what the movie is going to be about.

I had a little bit of trouble finding a room to record my audio in, however I got lucky as someone in my class had taken out a small room for the day, and as it turned out, they were unable to use it due to their headphones not working. This meant that I was able to use the room to record my audio, getting it ready much sooner than I had initially anticipated.

When I listened to my recordings, I found that the audio was mostly clear, though in a few places it seemed to get a bit muffled. This wasn’t a massive problem in of itself, as the audio of the time would have had similar issues and I can edit the audio files themselves to make my voice clearer if need be. The main problem that I have to contend with is that my voice doesn’t really match the style of narration that was common in the 50’s and 60’s. In order to try and emulate that style, I’ll have to heavily edit the audio recordings, it should be possible, but audio has always been my weakpoint when it comes to making films and I worry that it will be quite time consuming.

With all of my filming done, I was able to move onto the editing stage. For editing, I used Adobe Premiere Pro CC. I first of all checked my storyboard and script so see what order the scenes would go in. Then using the ‘Razor’ tool I cut the takes I wanted from the recordings and prepared to put them in order.

One thing that made this more difficult than previous films, was my decisison to use Greenscreen. This meant that I had to learn how Greenscreening worked and apply it to the necessary clips. Then I had to make sure that the clips lined up correctly, so you could see what was happening in the background. I found that while it was mostly all right, sometimes the Greenscreen would appear again in places, creating a splodge of green on the clip. As my film will be in black and white, this might actually help emulate the film grain/damaged film look that you see in a lot of movies from before and around the 50’s.

Another challenge that I will face in editing, will be creating a lazer effect for a scene. I will have to use Adobe After Effects, which I do not have much experience in. Luckily it will only be for one scene. So the edits shouldn’t be too time consuming.

I was finally able to film last week. My film required the use of the TV studio, and while it was booked out that day, the person who was meant to be filming there was missing their actor, this meant that I had the time to film my movie. However, as the slot that I got to film in was so unexpected. I wasn’t totally prepared for it. My script still needed to be printed off and I still needed to find an actor for one of the rolls. Luckily I had plenty of time in the day, and was able to get the script printed and find an actor to fill the roll. For my film I had:

Conor playing – Man

Tammy playing – Woman

Fin playing – Professor

The characters were un-named because as my film is a parody trailer for a B-Movie, it wasn’t necessary to name them.

The actual filming process went well, we had to do a few retakes at time as the actors occasionally laughed while reading their lines or felt that they could do a better performance and wanted to try again.

I also had the Greenscreen out during recording, I initially only intended to use it for a few shots, but it ended up being in all of them. We had to straighten the Greenscreen against the back wall as otherwise it would cast shadows and wouldn’t work. We didn’t have the manpower to do this on set, so instead we got a table and chair and used them to straighten it out and hold it in place. This seemed to work well, however I won’t know entirely how well it worked until I get to editing.

These videos help show the style of film that I am hoping to create, as well as giving an example of how I decided on which aspect ratio I wanted to use for my film. The two film trailers, though quite different are similar in a number of ways, namely the large font that appears on screen throughout the trailer as well as the voiceover. These are aspects that I could incorporate into my own film.

For my Final Major Project, I have taken inspiration from old hollywood monster movies, such as Godzilla and the many copies that it spawned. My film will take more inspiration from the latter. Aiming for a purposefully cheap look in order to parody the low budget films of the time.

In order to try and mimic these shoddy monster movies. I am going to create a small cardboard city and then let my Cat loose inside of it. The cardboard city will likely not have much of a true layout, as my Cat will need room to move about it and I will need to be able to move the Camera around the city easily. I plan to construct the city outside on a cardboard base one issue this may present is that some of the cardboard boxes that I plan to use as buildings may get blown down by the wind.

Once I have the footage of the city, I will go to college and use the Green Screen in the recording studio to superimpose may actors into some of the scenes. While the Studio itself will serve as an interior space in the film otherwise.

Once I have all of the footage compiled together, I will edit it down into a film trailer, trying to mimic the style that was popular at the time. I even hope to export the final product in a 4:3 ratio, also known as ‘Academy’, in order to better emulate the style of film that I hope to create.